Payback
by Lost1n7heDark
Summary: Faith reflects on her revenge and her feelings and who exactly it was for. Rated for language. One-shot.


**Time: Right after 'This Year's Girl' from Season 4, when Faith's hopped a freight train, bolting out of Sunnydale. **

**Summary: Faith reflects on her revenge and who it was - and is? - against. One-shot.  
**

**Enjoy and review, sil vous plait.**

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Payback really was a bitch.

She tries to remember a time when she really cared. When it all really mattered. When her heart was at least the little bit content. When the bottle hadn't been filled up to the top just yet. Everything in her life had gone in circles, so why not her heart as well? She figures it was bound to happen. All the well hid rage, the pain, it was all bound to explode and expose itself to the world that ignored her. The irony, she thinks, is that the world still ignores her. Still pretends that she didn't exist. And when she did exist, she was only the lowest of life forms to be in existence. The lowest of the low. The queen of evil and sleaze. The very image of darkness and deception rolled into the figure of a beautiful woman. Most people find **that** ironic.

She doesn't.

She never cared much for the Good Book. The Bible. The word of God and such like. She still doesn't. But she knows the stories. The beginning. All the goodness, the innocence, the purity of man was brought to an end by the wiles of a woman. Eve. She was said to be beautiful and made from the bones of Adam, who was the creation of God. Vaguely she wonders if Eve was about 5 foot 5 inches, with dark wavy hair and smoldering brown eyes, luscious lips and a body to die for. Probably. They say men and women are the same. That they are equal. She believes it. All of humanity is equal. Equal in all of what they do. Their morality, their conscience, their acts of goodness. They matched each other, balanced each other, in their stupidity, their overwhelming emotions, their cruelty, their everything. Especially in their badness.

_"These are innocent people."_

_"No such animal."_

That she believes the most. Nobody is innocent. She knows it from experience. All her experience. Everyone and everything has their share of darkness, even the good ones. They all tried, they all still try, to hide that spark of evil inside. Everyone does. Well, almost everyone. She didn't. She doesn't. Nothing changed. She disappointed once, and she disappointed twice. It is all she knows how to do, she thinks. It is all she cares to do. Because being someone good does not make you good, but being someone bad makes you bad. Really bad. She realized this the very second she spoke a word back to her mother. But it didn't matter to her then if she was good or bad. A good child makes nought a good mother, but an ignorant one. A bad child still makes nought a good mother, but one who is made to pay attention for the sake of her welfare checks.

Bingo.

It almost seems pathetic now, how much she yearned for that attention. How much she still yearns for it. She hides it well; she has to. It's always a matter of life or death when it comes to her. Always will be, it seems. She assumes she's seen enough of life anyways to care too much. But even still, she knows she fears death now. Not because she fears death itself, but she fears dying as she is now. She doesn't admit it. She won't. It is not in her blood to let go of her pride to relent herself to open up to the fact that all she wants for Christmas is a family. Perhaps editing out the Christmas part, though it did sound somewhat fitting and elegantly poetic. She pretends not to care much for poetry, either, or any other literature. But it was all a part of her, whether it was recent or a very long time ago. She was born, a hellspawn as she believes herself to be, or just a normal human child as the rest of the world saw her. Why, she doesn't know. Even when the first Watcher approached her.

A Slayer, she was told. A hero, someone good. Someone with strength and power and justice. Things she never knew could exist for her. But in some twisted way, they did. She only had to change herself to have them. So she did. She tried. She worked so desperately to be a hero. To be someone. To be good. She tried so hard to **be**. It was either that or fade away into the non-existence her mother had. Or her father, whoever he was. For a while she thought maybe she really was good. That she'd finally made it to the top of the world and had God (or someone like Him) at her side. She knows it was stupid of her to believe it. To hope. She refuses to believe again. Stupid of her to even think that she had what someone good should have. A home. A family. Friends. Only good people had those things, and she is not good. Her downfall began with Kakistos, and ended with her own knife in her stomach. So cleanly sliding inwards.

Strangely, she had been waiting for it.

Everybody is equal, she thinks, except her. She is unequal, as Buffy is unequal. They are the two who are set apart from the standards of humanity. Buffy is good, and she is bad. Blondie was born to be perfect, to be beautiful and protect the world. And she; she was born to be who she is now. Evil, unloved, and born to hate with a smoldering anger that can't be smothered out. She hates more than someone should be allowed to hate, she lives in the anger of all 18 years of her life, deteriorating into the pain. She hides it. She protects it all with the wall. The wall of what? The wall of fake smiles, physical beauty, and sex. Sex is what embodies her. She **is** sex. Personified. Indeed, she's all about the fucks. Fucks, because she doesn't remember a single face. She closes her eyes and pretends to be caught up in ecstasy, because she hates to look. She hates to see the lust, the mocking, the apathy that only drives home the fact that she is only a fuck. She'll never be anything more.

She is ashamed. But she will never admit it. Because suddenly she doesn't care. She feels the cold air but she doesn't pull her jacket in closer. She feels the bump bump bump of the road but she doesn't shift to make herself more comfortable. She doesn't deserve comfort. She only thinks, she only cares to think. She wonders, she figures, she ponders, she contemplates. Because it isn't fair. She is angry and she is hurt, but she isn't bound by all of her feelings to direct it all towards the people she wants to hate. No, the irony is sickening. It makes her want to vomit all over the dust and hay near her feet.

_"You can't win this."_

_"Shut up!"_

Shut up indeed. She despises the voices. Even more, the faces. She shouldn't feel this way, because she is bad. She is evil. She is proud of it, because truly she is bad. She is darkness and evil. Next in line to the throne of Hell. She is the black to Buffy's white. She is bad. She is evil. She **is**.

_"You think I'm afraid of you?!"_

Right?

_"You're nothing!"_

She wonders how it came to be like this. Why it came to be like this. Why she didn't leave. Even more, why she returned and went to the church. Why she fought. For goodness. Why she cared.

_"You disgusting, murderous bitch!"_

She doesn't understand why she felt the way she did when she saw her face. The vicious cycle came to its beginning; **found** its beginning and worked its magic. Everything came to a standstill and yet moved in fast motion at the same time. All the things she thought she knew were erased and now she pretends she doesn't know why.

_"You're nothing!" _

How she woke up hating - with so much passion, she thought - Buffy and the clever Scooby Gang, and finding that the only person she ever hated was herself. But she tells herself it's not the truth.

_"You're disgusting!"_

Can someone so evil ever be good? Is she really asking this question? She can't be. She is bad, and proud of it. Bad, bad, bad. So fucking evil. She is the queen of evil.

_"You're..."_

And she hates herself for it.

_"...nothing!"_

Payback really is a bitch.

(But oh, look who's talking.)


End file.
